Samhain (Halloween) Pilgrimage

City of London Pilgrimage: celebrate Samhain (Halloween) walking mindfully & honouring heritage, St Paul’s to Tower of London

Samhain ‘Cross-Quarter ’ Pilgrimage in the City of London

The Celtic Year has 8 Festivals:

2 Solstices and 2 Equinoxes marking stages of the Earth’s revolution around the Sun.

4 Cross-quarter Festivals, half-way between solar festivals, marking the start of each season. These are Samhain (31 Oct Halloween), Imbolc (31 Jan), Beltane (1 May) and Lammas (1 Aug)

Our Samhain Pilgrimage is the first of our Cross-Quarter Pilgrimages in London. We invite you to walk with us mindfully, connecting with a sense of place, honouring what has gone before as we celebrate the start of a new season. The following 3 Pilgrimages will be Primrose Hill 31 Jan, Greenwich Park 1 May and City of Westminster 1 Aug.

Just as our bodies have energy points, chakras, so have our ancestors laid out landscape temples, east-west, along the three hills bordering the Thames. Some refer to this as the Chakric Dragon Temple. We will walk along this energy line, starting at St Paul’s (crown chakra) and completing our pilgrimage at the Tower of London (root chakra). Along the way we will connect with other energy points such as the London Stone (heart chakra) and honour our ancestors.

As you can appreciate, this pilgrimage differs from a ‘guided tour’. It’s a journey to connect with the spirit of place and our heritage. Our information sheets will reduce the need for ‘group leader speak’, so we can enjoy our walk and soak up the atmosphere despite traffic noise and Covid restrictions of maintaining safe distances. We will pause along our route, light tealights at special places, connect and commune. We end our Pilgrimage with tea near the Tower of London.

Your Pilgrimage leaders are Roberta Ardern (front) and Phyllis SantaMaria (back, the ‘tyler’) We are doing this Pilgrimage for and with Gatekeeper Trust, a charity devoted to personal and planetary healing through pilgrimage. We are following Gatekeeper’s guidelines for safety and use their ritual to ‘tune into place and the event’ at the start, during and end of our Pilgrimage. Roberta, a London Guide and Phyllis, a keen amateur, have researched and walked the route and developed the information sheet.

Tickets and Booking:

The charge of £10 full fee, £5 or £1 concession goes fully to Gatekeeper Trust. (Option to join as member on the registration form.)

Please book via Eventbrite so we can keep track of numbers

When you register, you will receive specific joining instructions, Roberta’s and Phyllis’s contact information.

Of course, wear layers, waterproofs, bring face masks, Tea at the end is at your own cost.

WE LEAVE THE MEETING POINT PROMPTLY AT 14.00 HOURS, SO PLEASE ARRIVE 10 MINS EARLY.

Gatekeeper Trust has Pilgrimages throughout the UK, throughout the year. Refer to https://gatekeeper.org.uk/ for listings and registration. In this time of Covid, we need more and more to connect with the spirit of place, to heal our planet and ourselves by walking mindfully and with one another in companionship.

Read our COVID restriction guidance - click here